


In Which Danny May (Not) Have Made a Mistake

by Steerpike13713



Series: Vlad Fenton AU [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Be Careful What You Wish For, Episode: s02e16 Masters of All Time, Gen, Multi, Polyamory, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 23:38:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9521117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: When Danny asked Clockwork to send him back in time to avert Sam and Tucker being infected with ecto-acne, he really ought to have been more specific about where the timeline might be changed. When he returns, he thinks everything is back to normal....at least until the changes start piling up.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zappy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zappy/gifts).



This second trip through time was looking to be almost as hellishly depressing and nightmarish as the last one had been, and nearly getting killed by all the ghosts your psychotic future self had managed to piss off was not an easy one to beat. The first sign of something being really, seriously wrong with this whole thing involved the horrifying realisation that he blended in. Seriously, he was going to have to reconsider the whole costume design after this. The second sign was a flyer on a notice-board not far from where he’d come out, advertising a ghost portal opening in room 101 of the science building, which would’ve been just about perfect if it hadn’t been a) old and b) completely inaccurate. Room 101 of the science building was cordoned off with black-and-yellow tape and looked like a bomb had hit it, and when he asked someone for the date, it was two weeks after the day on the flyer.

“So much for ‘the ghost of time!’” Danny hissed, crumpling up the flyer just for something to do, “Couldn’t even get the right day for it!” He made to storm off down the corridor, and maybe give Clockwork a piece of his mind, when he walked right into a very _solid_ someone. A very solid someone in an orange jumpsuit. It might be the eighties, but there were only so many people who’d wear _that_ voluntarily and without any sign of embarrassment.

“What?” Jack Fenton said, glaring at him, “Come to gawk at how bad we screwed up?”

Danny swallowed, and stared. It was disconcerting, being snapped at by his dad, like being mauled by a big friendly dog, and also, Jack looked _awful_. Three-days-without-sleep awful, weight-of-the-world-on-his-shoulders awful. It wasn’t something Danny had ever seen on him before, and he couldn’t say he was enjoying the experience now.

“Uh…” Danny started, “Sorry? I just got here, but I, uh, I saw this flyer, and since I’m into ghosts too, I figured-”

Jack made a grab for the flyer, ignoring Danny’s protests, and sighed dramatically when he looked at it. “Yes,” he said gloomily, “Well, you can just clear off. It flopped. Spectacularly. Guess I ought to just pack the whole ghost-hunting thing in and go back to…I don’t know, whatever it is I’m not going to screw up.”

“What- No!” Danny protested, because…honestly, Jack Fenton without his ghost-mania ceased to be Jack Fenton. “No! I mean…ok, you destroyed the lab, but…nothing that bad happened, right? Everyone has a few failures before they make it big, don’t they?”

It was the wrong thing to say. Jack’s whole face fell, and the rest of him just seemed to slump at Danny’s words.

“My best friend was in there with me,” he said, “He’s in hospital now. If I’d just waited a moment to let Maddie check the damn calculations…”

And, ok, Danny knew Jack hadn’t always moderated his language for reasons of Not Around the Children, but it still sounded weird to hear him swear, even that mildly. And anyway, Danny was pretty sure that saying not to worry about it because said best friend turned out to be an asshole anyway was going to get him thrown across the room, and being Jack’s son from the future was not going to help him there at all.

“Yeah, but…” Danny started, then trailed off, because he had absolutely no idea where else to take that line. “Ok, but clearly your friend was interested too? I mean, you were doing this experiment together, right?”

“The three of us were,” Jack agreed, “Me, Maddie and…” he heaved a sigh, “Vlad. Vlad Masters – he’s my roommate too. Or he was. Odds are he’ll be in hospital for the rest of the year, so they’re talking about moving his stuff out and giving someone else his bed. I’ll probably never talk to him again!”

The best thing that could be said for the situation was that Danny did not have to pretend to be absolutely mortified about this near-stranger spouting off his personal life to all and sundry inside about ten minutes of meeting. Not that Jack would’ve noticed if he hadn’t looked properly awkward, but it was genuinely uncomfortable to listen to. Danny would bet anything that Vlad wouldn’t have given Jack a second thought if the accident had gone the other way.

“Well…uh…nothing to say you can’t visit, right?” he said, for lack of anything else to say. “I mean, he’s in hospital, he’s not _dead_ …” Great choice of words there, ghost-boy. “If he’s really your friend he’ll be willing to talk,” Danny extemporised desperately, “Anyway, I gotta run, so- Uh- See you!”

He bolted for it, so fast he thought he might have used a bit of ghost power to do it. When he caught up with Clockwork, he was going to-

Danny was in the air above Amity Park, looking down on Fenton Works. “Wh- Wha- _WHAT_?” he spluttered “You didn’t even put me back in the right time! What sort of guardian of time _are_ you if you can’t even get me to the right freaking day!” He looked again at the building where, even now, Sam and Tucker’s lives were in the balance, and stopped dead. No quarantine tent. Nothing even close to resembling a quarantine tent. “But…I didn’t even change anything,” he said, more to himself than Clockwork, if the great omnipotent asshat was still listening. “How’d- Did something happen while I was away?” His stomach lurched at the thought. Sam and Tucker, they weren’t- they hadn’t died, had they? Ecto-acne wasn’t fatal _that_ quickly, was it? It couldn’t be – Vlad had lived _how_ many years with it, again? – but Danny couldn’t shake the thought. The sooner he got back and saw what was going on with his own eyes, the better.

He swooped down, shifting into his human form before his feet even hit the ground, and raced for the door. If his parents had found a cure, that was one thing, though how they could’ve done that in the time it took to get to Clockwork’s castle and get majorly ripped off was a mystery to Danny. If they hadn’t, though…something about all of this felt wrong, it was too quick, too neat, too _simple_. And, in Danny’s experience, the first time it looked as though things were going well was usually the moment at which everything went really, spectacularly wrong in some way that would probably take three times as much effort to fix.

Jazz was sprawled out on the sofa when he came in, her legs over the end and her nose in a book on parapsychology. Granted, she was doing so in a sweater he’d never seen before, but the sight in front of him was so _normal_ it stopped Danny dead in his tracks.

Jazz sighed, and looked at him over the top of her book, “It’s all right,” she said, “He’s asleep. Mom said he seemed stable when she looked in on him earlier.” She looked worried, to Danny, and that was concerning enough on its own.

“Uh…right,” Danny said, “I’ll just…um…you seen Sam and Tucker?”

Jazz gave him another of her ‘trying to puzzle out Danny’s adolescent psychology’ looks, and turned a page. “Probably at the Nasty Burger or something – you should talk to them. It’ll be good for you.”

“You do remember what happened last time you said that,” Danny muttered, but he was glad to have the excuse to be out of the house. Sam and Tucker would know what was going on, and besides, he needed to see them, just to see they were still there and not infected with the awful, festering sores of the ecto-acne. The thought of being stuck like that for years was almost enough to make him feel sorry for _Vlad_ , and seeing it on Sam and Tucker had been nothing short of nightmarish.

They were at the Nasty Burger when he got there, and when he dropped into the booth next to Tuck, both of them looked surprised…and concerned, which should, in hindsight, have been yet another clue that Danny had done more to the timeline than one short conversation should really have been able to achieve.

“Is your dad going to be ok?” Sam asked, sharing a glance with Tucker.

Danny swallowed. “Uh…last I checked,” he said lamely, “Look, guys…this is going to sound pretty freaky, but have you...oh I dunno...had something explode in your face recently?”

Tucker dropped his burger. Sam stared.

“…guessing that’s a ‘no’.” Danny scratched at the back of his head, “I…uh…I made a deal with Clockwork. But he completely screwed me over! I don’t know why you’re not still all…” he gestured in the vague direction of his face. “I mean, I didn’t even prevent the stupid accident! I was there for…what, ten minutes? Twenty, tops.”

They were giving him the sort of looks now that suggested that he’d gone even further into making no sense than was already sort-of-usual.

“I guess Clockwork really did help, then,” Danny muttered.

Tucker raised his eyebrows, “Yeah, and that’s all very interesting, but who the heck is Clockwork?”

Danny froze. No. No, it couldn’t mean…the explosion was supposed to have happened weeks ago, this didn’t mean...what he was hoping it wasn’t.

“You- you guys should know who that is,” he said, his mouth suddenly dry. “He’s helped us out before – my whole ‘evil future self’ thing with the CAT tests?”

Nothing but blank looks from Sam and Tucker, and this was really, really starting to get to Danny now. Still…they had to know.

“Clockwork is…or says he is…the Guardian of Time. How that squares with him being a ghost, I don’t know, but he can send people back in time. You…” Danny scrubbed a hand over his face, “Plasmius showed up at the Nasty Burger, infected the pair of you with ecto-acne so that I’d have no choice but to find a cure for him, so I tried to go back and avert the accident that led to him becoming a half-ghost in the first place. Clockwork sent me to the wrong time – by about two weeks. I was there for ten freaking minutes, and now...you’re cured. Somehow. But if Clockwork could’ve done that this whole time, why bother sending me back in time at all? And – you don’t believe a word I’m saying, do you?”

Tucker and Sam shook their heads, both looking absolutely boggled. Tucker was the one who recovered his voice first, though.

“Wait- _Plasmius_ did that to us? Seriously? I mean, he’s not our biggest fan, but… _Plasmius_?”

It was Danny’s turn to stare now. “Uh…yeah? Why’s that so surprising, the guy’s a complete frootloop.”

Sam and Tucker shared another of those odd glances, before Sam spoke.

“Uh…Danny? Plasmius is…kind of a local hero. Well, kind of. Everyone thought he was evil or an urban legend for years, the ghost who fought his own kind and always showed up wherever your mom and dad happened to be. Then you had the accident, and met him at…”

“At my parents’ twenty-year college reunion?” Danny asked, certainty dropping into the pit of his stomach like a stone. “Yeah, I remember meeting the guy there too. Vlad Masters – you know him, right?”

“Uh…chances of us knowing two guys named Vlad?” Tucker pointed out, “Pretty low, I’m guessing. And the only Vlad we know is…” he seemed to stifle a snicker, before remembering. “Uh, don’t get me wrong, he’s great and all, but I can’t think of anyone _less_ like Plasmius. He gets panic attacks just being _near_ ghosts.”

Sam elbowed Tucker, but didn’t contradict him. “He’s been attacked by what must be every ghost in town,” she said, which sounded more like agreement than anything.

Danny imagined, for a moment, Plasmius’s response to sharing a name with the person Sam and Tucker were describing, and had a sudden, startling mental image of Vlad blowing his castle up again just out of sheer vexation.

“But – look, what I’m getting at is…before that happened, everyone but you and Vlad was _fine_ ,” he said, “What’s going _on_?”

“No idea,” Tucker said, looking worried for the first time, “A couple days back he was fine, now he’s sick. And I mean… _really_ sick. You said this sort of thing happened a lot more when you were a kid, but never _this_ badly…”

Danny felt sick. He said: “My dad doesn’t have health problems. Or…he didn’t.”

The thought would, in the old timeline, have been absurd. Jack Fenton was built like a bear, and could probably still lift both Jazz and Danny over his head the way he had when they were kids, if they hadn’t both started protesting whenever he tried it the moment they hit double digits. He’d infuriated everyone by hardly coming down with so much as a cold in fourteen years. One short conversation couldn’t have done _this_ , could it?

Or…so far, the changes seemed sort of small. Fenton Works was still in the same place, Jazz and Sam and Tucker were all the same…everything except the Plasmius thing, and Danny just bet this was some sort of complicated brainwashing scheme – it sounded just the frootloop’s style, somehow. And if Jack was sick and Plasmius was a local hero, how much easier would it be to swoop in and sweep Maddie off her feet when Jack suffered a _tragic_ ‘natural’ death from whatever it was he had?

“He does here,” Tucker said, probably trying for ‘apologetic’ but ending up somewhere around ‘seriously freaked out’. “Uh, obviously. Look, it’s not that we think you’re lying, but all this is just kinda…”

“Freaky?” Sam supplied. “Unbelievable? Makes no freaking sense?”

“Yeah,” Tucker agreed, “Pretty much.

“It’s not that we think you’re lying,” Sam added when Danny glared at her, “Just…you _said_ you were only there for a couple minutes, didn’t you? How much difference could that make?”

“Ok? And? What d’you think is more likely?” Danny demanded.

Sam shrugged, “Say this Clockwork guy exists, and he did something to your head? Made you remember something that didn’t happen, or brainwashed you into forgetting about some things? It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened, right?”

“ _I’m_ brainwashed?” Danny started heatedly.

Tucker snorted, “Think about it,” he said, “If I wanted to be the one to take out Phantom and Plasmius, but couldn’t do it outright because…well, let’s face it, you’re pretty badass…turning you against each other would be the perfect way to do it. Two birds, one stone.”

Danny scowled at the pair of them. “Fine!” he snapped, “Tell you what, then? We’ll take the Spectre Speeder. I’ll show you Clockwork – I want a word with him right now anyway.”

“Great,” Sam said, “Maybe then we can get this sorted out.”

Danny knew they were still thinking it, which irritated him even more, and he didn’t bother to slow his steps to let Sam and Tucker keep up as they headed back towards Fenton Works. The world had been re-written, and nothing made sense – he was going to find out if it was possible to _strangle_ Clockwork, if it was the last thing he ever did.

When they entered the house, his mom was there. She looked exhausted – the sort of exhausted she only usually got when she’d been working on something long enough to forget to sleep or eat or do anything except focus on the job in front of her – but she looked up as they came in.

“You’re just in time,” she said, “Danny, could you take up that tray over there? With the soup and the ectoplasmic purifier tonic? It’s the only painkiller we’ve found that works.”

“What- Uh- Sure,” Danny said, looking desperately over at Sam and Tucker, neither of whom seemed any more comfortable than he was. “This tray here?”

“Do you see another tray, Danny?” Maddie asked, and ran her fingers through her hair, wincing. “I need more coffee, then it’s back to the lab.”

Tucker’s eyebrows looked to be in danger of disappearing into his hairline, but he didn’t say anything as Danny grabbed the tray and headed upstairs, sick anger and frustration churning in his stomach. When he found out what caused this (it hadn’t been him, it couldn’t have been him) he’d- Well, he didn’t know what he’d do, but it would probably involve a Fenton thermos and the nastiest pit he could drop it in.

Now he was actually seeing it, the house was full of small, jarring differences – the chairs were different, there was a ridiculously long, badly-knitted striped scarf thrown over the end of the stair-rail, and he kept spotting odd flashes of green and gold about the place that just set his teeth on edge – but his parents’ room was still in roughly the same place. And, one thing to be said for ghost powers, they made it easier to open a door when you had both hands occupied. He opened the door and stepped inside, and stopped dead at the sight that met his eyes.

Vlad Masters – _Vlad Masters_ – was lying there, in the bed, covered in open, weeping sores and _petting a cat_ , of all things. A pretty, fluffy little white cat that was purring like an engine and looked like it had been borrowed from a Bond villain, admittedly, but still. Danny’s eyes flicked over the room as he set the tray down on the bedside table, trying to absorb anything that wasn’t Vlad Masters in green-and-gold pyjamas with the Packers logo on the chest, sitting up in Danny’s parents’ bed as if he belonged there. The bed was larger than in his own world, Danny noticed distantly, and even if the small collection of Packers memorabilia on the chest-of-drawers would be dwarfed by the one in Vlad’s castle in his own timeline, it was pretty impressively geeky all the same.

And then, all at once, Vlad looked up at him, and smiled in a way that, on anyone else, Danny might have called sheepish. His hair was coming out of its ponytail, and even putting aside the pyjamas, Danny was pretty certain this was the most sloppily put-together he’d ever seen Vlad in his life.

Danny was expecting gloating, or monologuing, or even an attempt to convince him to come to the dark side yet again. He was not remotely prepared for what was really said.

“Don’t tell your mother I let Brie in here – you know Maddie hates getting cat hair all over the sheets.”

Under other circumstances, Danny would’ve been fully prepared to shout and storm and demand to know just what Vlad had done. Unfortunately, the message didn’t appear to be reaching his brain, and the words wouldn’t come when he opened his mouth. Vlad’s smile slid off his face, but instead of gloating, he seemed oddly deflated.

“It’s better than it could be, at least,” he said, “You might not remember, but it was far more gruesome the first time around.”

It was difficult to imagine anything worse than open sores and glowing, ectoplasm-filled pustules, but he couldn’t think of any particular reason for Vlad to lie about that. The effects he was experiencing right now were humiliating enough without adding anything more. Danny opened his mouth, then closed it again – Vlad didn’t seem to know Danny wasn’t affected by…whatever he’d done…and if he did figure it out, Danny wasn’t fool enough to think Vlad couldn’t make getting to the portal a heck of a lot more difficult for them.

“You don’t need to hover, you know,” Vlad said testily. “I don’t expect I’m in any real danger – being half-ghost has its advantages.”

Danny started at that, and Vlad rolled his eyes, which did not do anything at all for his general appearance of having stepped out of one of the grosser bits of _The Exorcist_.

“No-one could’ve overheard that. Really, Daniel, and you accuse _me_ of being paranoid?”

“I- I didn’t say you were,” Danny said, backing away towards the door, his mind curiously blank in the way it usually only got when faced with a particularly fiendish and difficult test. The moment he thought about what was happening, he knew, he wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretence that all of this was somehow _normal_ for another minute.

“Do you really think you needed to?” Vlad asked, because…honestly, Danny wasn’t sure there was any version of Vlad Masters anywhere who _wasn’t_ completely insufferable. It was almost as major a part of his personality as being smug, scheming and obsessed with Maddie Fenton.

“Uh- Yeah- Well…I…uh…I gotta go. Ghost attack downtown, think Skulker’s behind it, so I’ll just…go. Now. Bye!”

It was, he knew, the worst possible excuse, but if Vlad was admitting to being half-ghost, logically he probably still knew about Danny, which meant this world wasn’t that different. Unless the brainwashing had been really thorough, but Danny doubted that somehow – the sign outside still read ‘Fenton Works’, even, so Vlad couldn’t have been on this scheme for long. Either way, the sooner Danny got away, the sooner they could get to the Ghost Zone and get Clockwork to fix his mess.

The moment they were in the underground hangar where his parents kept the Spectre Speeder and the RV when no-one was using them, Danny rounded on his friends.

“Vlad Masters! _Vlad freaking Masters_ is my dad here? And neither of you thought it was worth mentioning!”

Tucker gaped at him, Sam was spluttering, looking rather as if she’d just been hit across the face with a wet fish.

“Masters?” she demanded, “That guy you said was Plasmius in whatever crazy reality you remember? You think your dad is-”

“I know he is! I _recognised_ him!” Danny glared at her, “And what do you mean _my_ crazy reality?”

“I mean, Danny, that none of what you’ve been saying makes _sense_!” Sam snapped back at him. “I mean…your dad is Plasmius, only he’s not your dad, and oh, by the way, you hate him? What do you even think this Masters guy _is_?”

The explanation of just _how much bad news_ Vlad was lasted them through half the ghost zone, and would probably have gone better if Danny hadn’t seen the incredulous looks on Sam and Tucker’s faces and gotten defensive about it.

“-the point is- the point is, Vlad Masters is…” he flapped a hand to emphasise this, “A completely crazy billionaire half-ghost with a fixation on- on killing my dad and marrying my mom! Not…” his mind dragged him back to the sight of a scruffy, messy-haired Vlad with a cat on his lap. “…whatever you think he is,” he finished lamely. “And – how come you two didn’t recognise the name earlier? I’m pretty sure I said Plasmius was Vlad Masters back there.”

And that was a terrifying thought all on its own – was he even Danny Fenton anymore? Or…no, because this was a hoax, a trick. Vlad had finally mastered brainwashing, or he’d made a deal with that Desiree chick, or- or- or _something_ , because there was no way ten minutes of wandering around lost and trying not to get sucked into awkward conversation with his dad – his _real_ dad – could do this much.

Sam and Tucker shared another look.

“Because _that isn’t his name_ ,” Sam said.

“ _What?_ ”

Tucker shrugged “He’s been Vlad Fenton for as long as I’ve known him,” he said.

“Vlad Fenton,” Danny repeated, “Right, sure. Because that makes _what kind of sense?_ ”

If it was Desiree, that might be the sting in the tail of the wish, if Vlad got the family he claimed to want, but got the rest of Jack Fenton’s life as well. Danny wondered for one mad moment whether that meant Jack was at the castle in Wisconsin, then shook himself. When he found Clockwork, it wouldn’t matter anymore _what_ had happened here.

“He changed it when they got married, I think,” Sam said. “Uh…if they got married, I mean. I’m not actually sure that’s legal…”

“Wait a minute,” Tucker interrupted, before Danny could snap that it probably _should_ be illegal. “He wants to _kill your dad?_ Your dad being…”

Danny stared at him in horror. “ _Jack_ Fenton! Who else?”

Both Sam and Tucker looked, if anything, even more completely dumbfounded than before, which did nothing for Danny’s nerves.

“Vlad tried to kill him at the college reunion thing earlier this year – it was happening over at his place in Wisconsin, the castle? Uh…guess you two don’t know about that either…I didn’t know it was him at first, because he kept going after Dad as Plasmius-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Tucker held up his hands in front of him. “ _Skulker_ attacked you in Wisconsin – and…castle? You mean that weird hotel you were staying in?”

“…a hotel,” Danny repeated, “Right. Because ‘castle full of Packers junk’ is a viable hotel theme.”

Sam almost laughed. “ _That_ I can believe your dad would do,” she said.

“He’s not my-” Danny started, “I didn’t change _that_ much. This is just some new crazy evil scheme of Plasmius’s, I’d bet you _anything_.”

Neither Sam nor Tucker said anything, but Danny could see they weren’t convinced.

Clockwork’s castle was pretty deep in the Ghost Zone, but he’d found the way there once already, he could do it again, even if the Spectre Speeder made things more difficult, being bound by laws that the ordinary travel of ghosts was not. Granted, crashing said Spectre Speeder through Clockwork’s castle wall might not have been the best way to ask for his help, but in Danny’s defence, steering was tricky in a place where time had no meaning, meaning that the crash he had been trying to avoid had technically already happened.

Clockwork was waiting for them. Because of course he was. Seeing the future was sort of his gig.

“What the heck did you _do?_ ” Danny demanded, springing out of the Spectre Speeder and trying, without much success, to grab Clockwork by the collar of his robes. Of course, that wasn’t exactly the wisest course when dealing with the Ghost of Time, but by the second time he’d been unceremoniously dumped back beside the Speeder, Danny managed to get his temper under control.

“ _I_ did not do anything,” Clockwork said, “You did.”

Danny spluttered. “This- This wasn’t _me!_ ”

Clockwork raised an eyebrow, “Don’t you remember what you said?” he asked. He sighed at the sight of the blank look on Danny’s face. “Of course not. You leapt in without thinking yet again, and expected all your problems to have been solved. Well, now they have, your friends are free of their infection, and still you are not satisfied.”

“ _I_ leapt in without thinking?” Danny demanded, indignant, “You were the one who sent me to the wrong freaking day!”

Clockwork raised an eyebrow. “I sent you to the only place where the time-stream could shift without erasing you from existence entirely,” he said. “What you did there is another matter.”

“So, wait,” Tucker leapt in. “So…it really happened? This really is a whole new timeline – what happened to our Danny?”

Clockwork turned his eerie gaze on Tucker. “The change in the time-stream led to his being…overwritten…when this Danny returned to your time. The time-stream will correct the mistake soon enough.”

“Glad _that_ doesn’t sound ominous at all,” Danny muttered, “Can I at least _see_ the accident again?”

He’d been able to jump through one of those portals during the last time-travel fiasco – he could do it again. Clockwork didn’t appear to remember that, or maybe he was just so entirely confident in his own power that he didn’t think there was any risk of it happening this time. Danny watched the three of them setting up, saw Jack grab- grab a can of soda instead of the ecto-purifier.

“That’s it!” Danny gasped, “THAT’S IT!” he looked over at Clockwork. “You- You can put things back, can’t you? To how they were before I meddled? I mean…that was interfering with the time-stream, and your whole job involves preventing…people…from…interfering with the time-stream.” Danny trailed off at the look on Clockwork’s face, but gathered himself and pressed on regardless. “I can cure Sam and Tucker without any need for tampering with the-”

“ _Further_ tampering,” Clockwork corrected him.

Danny stopped dead. “Uh…what?”

“The timeline has already been tampered with,” Clockwork said simply.

“So? Can’t you put it back?”

Clockwork raised a repressive eyebrow. “You have altered the timeline once already, and somehow managed to avoid entirely destroying it. Further tampering – even an attempt to restore your original timeline – might entirely destabilise it, and warp history beyond recognition.”

“THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN I HAVEN’T SCREWED WITH THE TIME-STREAM?” Danny very nearly shrieked, throwing out both hands as if to try and demonstrate the enormity of the problem in front of him. “B-but- _Vlad_! And-”

“The fate of one family is not an irreparable change,” Clockwork said dispassionately. “I expect you will start to remember, given time.”

“He will?” Tucker asked, looking hopeful for the first time.

“I don’t _want_ to remember!” Danny yelled. “Is there _anything_ – anything at all-”

Clockwork raised a hand. “All things in time,” he said. “One day, I will offer you the choice, and you will be free to make it. But first…go, and see the world your actions have created. Time _out_.”

And then, all at once, they were floating in the Ghost Zone, just beyond Clockwork’s castle. Or rather, where Clockwork’s castle ought to have been, for there was no sign of it.

Sam put a hand to the side of her head. “Did that just happen?”

“I think so,” Danny said moodily. Tucker said nothing. He was curled in the co-pilot’s seat, staring at nothing, and looking utterly shell-shocked. Danny couldn’t blame him – going catatonic was looking pretty appealing right now.

Sam sighed. “Ugh. Ok, because this apparently _isn’t_ crazy, run everything by me again. Without the shouting, this time.”

“Run- I have to go back there and pretend to be that- that _frootloop’s_ son, just like he’s been trying to convince me to pretty much since the _moment_ we met, and you’re asking me to-” Danny shook his head, “I mean- What do I even call him? I can’t think of him as ‘Dad’, I just… _no_. No.”

"Vati. You call him Vati." Tucker muttered absently, completely missing the point.

“It’s German,” Sam put in helpfully, “Or I think it is. And why’d you keep calling him a ‘frootloop’?”

Danny raked a hand through his hair. “Because that’s what he _is_! I just…ok, I changed the timeline, but Clockwork’s changed the timeline around my family before, so why’s he acting like this is a big deal now- _Oh_.” Now it all made sense. Horrible sense, admittedly, but still…sense. “It’s another plan,” he muttered. “It has to be. _That’s_ why the sign still says Fenton Works. _That’s_ why he’s here and not in Wisconsin-”

“Uh, Danny, this is starting to veer into crazy territory,” Sam tried, grabbing his shoulder, but Danny shook her off.

“He must’ve got to you and Tuck too – I bet you anything Desiree was involved with this – so all I have to do is find her and undo the wish! It’s just the sort of thing she’d like, so Vlad gets everything he said he wanted, but loses the wealth and fame and castle full of football memorabilia…”

“Wouldn’t Vlad remember being the guy you were ranting about earlier, though?” Sam protested, “I remembered, when I made my wish – you know, the one that stripped you of your powers? Did- uh- did that still happen to you?”

“Oh, it _happened_.” Danny shook his head. “But it’s the only thing that makes sense!”

“In what world,” Tucker demanded, jolted out of his apparent catatonia, “Does _that_ make sense?”

Danny was too caught up in the idea to listen. He could see the possibility of returning to normal, sane life (or as sane as his life ever got) just out of reach and full of the promise of not having to deal with Vlad freaking Masters in his home and acting like he belonged there.

“Ok, so he remembers the old timeline – pity it didn’t do anything for his ecto-acne problem…”

Sam and Tucker were actually starting to look quite disturbed when Danny looked around.

“What? This is the guy who _infected you with a deadly disease_ a couple hours ago!”

Tucker shifted uneasily, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh…the thing is,” he said awkwardly, “He kinda didn’t. Not here. Not to us. Maybe some version of him did, but…” he shrugged, and went back to staring out at the Ghost Zone as Sam steered them back towards the portal.

The lab, when they got back, was deserted, and they were able to sneak the Spectre Speeder back through to the hangar without any trouble. When they came back into the lab, though, Maddie was there. She looked, if anything, even worse – jittery on edge, with deep circles under her eyes, and Danny could see that the only reason that her hands weren’t shaking as she scribbled down calculations was that Maddie Fenton’s body was in the grip of Maddie Fenton’s mind.

“What- Oh, it’s you,” Maddie raised her goggles to rub her eyes. “What are you doing down here?”

Danny was just groping for a suitable excuse when Sam spoke up.

“We just wanted to help,” she said, elbowing Danny hard in the side and giving him a significant look, though Danny couldn’t for one second think why.

Maddie sighed. “Well, that’s very sweet of you, but I’m not sure there’s much you can do. I don’t know,” she admitted miserably, “That there’s anything I can do, except wait it out, and if this is as bad as it seems…” she cast a worried look at a monitor, and set her jaw stubbornly.

Sam elbowed him again. Danny glared at her.

She glared back, and then, apparently realising Danny had no clue what she was hinting at, said, “Uh…these ectoplasmic impurities? Do they look anything like the effects of…uh…mixing ectoplasm and diet cola?”

Maddie frowned, making as if to wave them off as she reached again for her notes. “Don’t be silly, why would-” she glanced down at the sheet of paper in front of her, went white, “Oh- My-”

She sprang to her feet, steadying herself on the counter, and oblivious to anything but the problem in front of her. While her back was turned, though, Sam elbowed him again.

“What was that all about?” she hissed.

Danny stared. “What was what about?” he hissed back, “You were the one who kept nudging me!”

“You knew what the cure was,” Sam whispered furiously, “And you didn’t tell your mom? This is Vlad’s _life_ in the balance!”

Danny froze. He hadn’t considered that. Vlad hadn’t seemed concerned for his life in either world, and even if he had been…well, there had been times he’d wanted nothing better than to be rid of Plasmius. He was quite keen on the idea even now, even, except that it might mean Desiree was out of town before he could put things back. Sam seemed to see some of that in his face, and she recoiled from him.

“Come on, Tucker,” she said in a low voice, “We’re done here.”

Danny couldn’t help but feel, abruptly, very alone as the two of them left the lab to go upstairs. A whole world he didn’t know, and he’d have to deal with it alone. He didn’t even know how any of this had happened, let alone how to put things back.

“And – done!” Maddie said, exhausted and delighted all at once, “You take the flask, Danny – my hands aren’t steady enough.”

For one wild moment, Danny considered dropping it…then, he remembered what Vlad had said about him. ‘More like me every day’. Vlad wouldn’t hesitate, if it were an enemy of his he could get rid of that easily, and Danny would rather have Vlad alive and taunting him every moment for the rest of his life than let him win _that_ argument, even in death.

It felt oddly surreal, nightmarish, walking ahead of Maddie up the stairs to the main house, and then again to the room she must now share with Vlad (and there was a thought Danny was trying desperately not to dwell on) _knowing_ what was waiting for him at the end. The walk seemed to take too long, even with his mom clearly bubbling over with relief a step behind him, such that Danny was almost afraid she’d topple over from sheer exhaustion before they made it.

He thought, on that walk, that nothing could surprise him. He was proven wrong twice over, as he pushed the bedroom door open, to see Jack Fenton sitting on the bed.

“Da- Ah…he’s…?” Danny forced himself to look down at Vlad, lying unconscious and eerily still, and to look concerned while he did it.

“Been like this for half an hour,” Jack said tersely, “Maddie- I think we’re losing him.” The pain in his voice was unlike anything Danny had heard there before, except…well, a couple hours and twenty years ago, just weeks after the accident with the portal.

“Mom’s figured out the impurities,” Danny said quickly, “Uh…do we put it on the sores, or…”

“It needs to be taken orally,” Maddie said, trying for ‘brisk’ and only getting another permutation of ‘worried’. “Jack, could you?”

Jack nodded fervently. “On it, baby,” he said, taking the flask straight out of Danny’s hands, and leaning over Vlad to pour it into his mouth.

Medicines did not, generally speaking, work instantaneously. But, like everything else to do with ghosts, the ecto-purifier didn’t work like a regular medicine. The sores began to fade from Vlad’s face, healing up before Danny’s eyes, even as Vlad’s flickered open.

“What- Maddie?” he mumbled, which was more or less what Danny would have expected to be the first thing Vlad would say on waking up.

“V-Man!” Jack cried, delighted, and tugged Vlad a little off the bed into a bone-crushing hug. This, too, was to be expected. Rather less expected was what happened next, as Jack’s grip loosened, and he leant down to kiss Vlad full on the mouth.

If anyone had asked Danny, before all of this, what Vlad Masters’ most probable response to Jack Fenton kissing him would be, he would have said…well, first he would have spent a few minutes protesting his horror at the whole idea, but after that, he would’ve said that Jack was probably going to get his nose broken, and should consider himself lucky if that was the worst of it. Or, possibly, that Vlad would set those creepy vulture-ghosts on him, or use the kiss as a way of breaking up Jack and Maddie so he could seduce Maddie for himself. Not that he’d ever put much thought into the idea, because…well, why would he? He was fourteen, and the thought of his father kissing _anyone_ was bad enough. The one scenario Danny had never come up with, however, was Vlad reaching up with one hand, the sores on the back fading even as Danny watched, to catch Jack gently by the chin, sliding his hand up Jack’s cheek to tangle his fingers in dark hair.

When they broke apart (which felt much longer to Danny, standing there in train-wreck fascination, than it had probably been in objective seconds) Jack was beaming, and even Vlad looked…less murderous than Danny would’ve expected, really, as he shoved Jack lightly in the chest.

“You’re crushing me, you big oaf,” he said, which was also to be expected, but the tone was wrong – too warm, and softer than sounded _right_ in Vlad’s voice. It wasn’t a quality Danny had ever heard there before, and it took him a few tries to tentatively label it as ‘affectionate’.

This was around the point at which Danny’s overtaxed understanding of reality started to give out. If anyone had asked him what he was thinking, Danny would have said he wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, but only because his mind had very nearly shut down even before Maddie sat down on the bed on Vlad’s other side, and been quite comprehensively kissed in her turn.

It violated all the rules of reality as Danny knew it. These were, in no particular order: Vlad Masters was obsessed with Maddie to the point of mania, hated Jack to an equal degree, and would sooner have cut off his own testicles with a spoon than sit there between the two of them with Jack’s arm around his back and Maddie’s hand in his (if he hadn’t already flown off the handle when Jack tried to kiss him). Probably the last rational thought that went through Danny’s head had been ‘well, so much for the Desiree and brainwashing theories’, and he would’ve been right. Certainly, his regularly scheduled Vlad would not have taken this part of the proceedings with any grace at all. Danny didn’t especially want to either, or he wouldn’t if he could get any part of his brain to accept what he was seeing as real.

A hand landed on his shoulder, and Danny looked up to see Jazz, standing next to him, watching the three by the bed with a sort of amused tolerance.

“Come on,” she said, too quietly to be heard over the frantic gasps of ‘so worried’ and ‘how did you-?’ from further inside. “Leave them to it.”


End file.
